by Linda Barnes
“Huh?” She opened her eyes into narrow slits. “What the hell’s going on?”
He pulled on his pants while he spoke, reached for his shoes. “I can’t explain now.”
“You’re crazy,” she said.
In the cab on the way to the police station, he wondered if he was.
Where had the woman who’d given Donagher that water bottle scraped off her makeup? Where had she transformed herself from a tall, big-footed, big-boned woman, with a too creamy skin, a too long skirt, and a too low voice, into the man Spraggue was certain she’d become?
TWENTY
“A man.”
Spraggue nodded wordlessly. It was the third time Hurley had repeated the two words since he had first swiveled around to glare at his unannounced, uninvited guest. The captain snuffed out a cigarette in what must have been an ashtray. From the cracked leather chair on the far side of the desk, it was invisible, hidden by overflowing wire in-and-out baskets, a Styrofoam cup collection, a crooked stack of Manila file folders, the dusty phone, and the remains of what smelled like an aging chicken salad sandwich. The first time Hurley had echoed the words, he’d punctuated them with shouted incredulous laughter. The second time, with indignant denial. The third time, his voice was just a mutter, followed by a regretful sigh.
“I was across the street from him, remember? Describing him … her … to the artist made me uneasy, made me wonder. Then at the theater, during the performance—Shakespeare, you know, girls dressed up as boys—it hit me. A woman, a tall broad-shouldered woman with big feet, a pale creamy sort of complexion, the kind you can get from a tube of grease paint, heavy enough to cover a just shaved beard.”
“Why do I get all the fucking weirdos?” Hurley inquired of the cracked ceiling.
“So haul out your mug-shot books and let me paw through them. You’ve got more male felons than female, I trust? I’ll bet you even have a file on female impersonators who’ve been picked up for the odd misdemeanor over the years, and one on transvestites, and male prostitutes and—”
“We don’t have to look in the mug books, Spraggue,” Hurley said heavily. “Damn, but I wish we’d picked up on this sooner.”
“On what?” Spraggue’s stomach took a dive.
“We can just look in the damned morgue; we’ve had the stiff there a week.” Hurley pressed a buzzer hidden under the sprawl of papers on his desk and a blue-uniformed officer opened the door. “Get me the file on JoJo Stearns,” the captain barked. The officer nodded, banged the door.
“The ID came in two, three days ago. It takes time to lift fingerprints, match ’em up with the vaunted FBI computer that has more down time than a hooker. Small-time hood death, that’s what we labeled it. The kind of death that, unless you find somebody actually standing over the body, smoking pistol in hand, you don’t solve until ten years later when some snitch gets burned and wants his prison sentence reduced. Then he says, hey remember JoJo? You still want to know who did JoJo? You get me out of here on a misdemeanor, or you get me Concord instead of Walpole, or you get me one-to-five instead of six-to-ten, and I’ll give you my brother-in-law.”
“JoJo Stearns,” Spraggue repeated.
“He was a very pretty man, in his ‘before’ photos,” Hurley said. “I can understand your not making him as a guy right off. He must have surprised a lot of people in a lot of johns in a lot of bars across this city.”
“He’s got a record? Vice stuff?”
Hurley shook his head.
“Well?”
“I don’t know—” Hurley began. He jumped at the thunderous knock on his glass-paned door. The uniformed man entered with a thick Manila file folder. “Just break the door down next time you want to get my attention, Brownlee.” The officer smirked and went out. “Jeez, we’re hiring real scumbags,” Hurley said. “Want to be a cop?”
“Hah.”
“That’s just it. You don’t want to be a cop, but you want me to give you information only cops are entitled to. That’s what I was going to say when old shit-for-brains interrupted.”
“Hurley, if I hadn’t brought my boy-girl revelation right to you, would you have any inkling that this stiff was the one who gave the water bottle to Donagher?”
“Might be the one.”
“A man dressed as a woman gives a senator a poisoned drink. The senator’s bodyguard dies. A man known to dress as a woman on a great many occasions, a man who matches my description of the water donor, turns up in the morgue—when? the very next day? You want to call it coincidence? You get that many guys dressed up as girls in the morgue?”
“Coincidences happen.”
“Sure they do.”
Hurley played with a pencil. He didn’t open the folder.
“So did JoJo die of natural causes?” Spraggue asked. “You didn’t say.”
“We thought at first it was an accident.”
“Why?”
“Came in through the fire department,” Hurley said.
“You always this loose-lipped?”
“Shit, man. This isn’t my case.”
“Collatos liked you. You said you liked him.”
“I don’t think he particularly cares, right now.”
“I care,” Spraggue said.
“The fireboys had another one of their typical fires of suspicious origin on Tuesday night. Slummy. Not exactly front page stuff. In case you haven’t noticed, two hundred twenty-five buildings in Boston have gone up in flames since last January: Dorchester, the South End, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain. Even Back Bay, where your aunt’s got her property. Most of the buildings are abandoned housing stock, old warehouses. This was a three-story wooden place on Tremont, boarded up, thought to be abandoned. It was, except for JoJo.”
“He didn’t live there?”
“JoJo didn’t live anywhere. He sat on one barstool until he found a home for the night and then he went back to another barstool until he found a home for the next night. Can you believe it? A broad with a pecker? You can never tell what’ll turn some creeps on.”
“Was the fire set?”
“Definitely. And the method was one the fireboys have come to know if not to love. This arson shit is getting me down.”
“It got Pete down, too. When he was working—” Spraggue stopped talking and his eyes narrowed.
“I’m way ahead of you, for once,” Hurley said. “Arson Squad. Collatos was working liaison with the Arson Task Force and the Arson Squad. Right? And somebody who just might have killed him gets burned up in a fire that sure as hell looks like arson.”
“Could it have been an accidental death? Could JoJo have been camped out in that particular house on the wrong night?”
“It wasn’t the sort of place our JoJo usually hung out. Not the sort of place to take a trick.”
“Then,” Spraggue said slowly, “Donagher could have nothing to do with this. Those threatening notes may really mean as little as I thought …”
Hurley opened the file and stared at it, but Spraggue knew he wasn’t reading. The captain made a show of reluctance before saying, “JoJo had connections to people who’ve been investigated for arson, people who are still under investigation …”
“Are you saying someone was after Pete because of something to do with his Arson Squad work?”
“Senator Donagher didn’t die. Collatos did.”
“Donagher was the one who was given the bottle.”
“But, of course, his bodyguard would taste it. Probably share it; that’s what a couple of runners racing together would normally do. We all assumed Senator Donagher was the target, because of the incident at the reservoir, because of the letters, because it seems more reasonable somehow to shoot at a United States senator than a retired cop. But Donagher doesn’t have a—what-do-you-call-it? idiosyncrasy with speed. Collatos did. He could have mentioned the fact. He was a talker.”
Spraggue ran a hand over his forehead. It came away flecked with grease paint.
Hurley went on. “What do
esn’t make sense is that Collatos wasn’t a threat anymore, wasn’t a cop. He was off the arson squad detail …”
“He could have known something.”
“He was a blabbermouth; if he’d known anything, half the cops in the country would have known.”
“Unless he didn’t know he knew it … didn’t know it was worth knowing.”
“Come again?”
“Or maybe he’d made a deal with someone …”
“No way,” Hurley said, slamming his hand down on the desk hard enough to threaten an avalanche of paperwork. “Collatos was as honest as I am. Goddammit, the minute a cop dies in smelly circumstances, people start talking corruption. Blame the victim. If you’re going to go after Pete, I’m not—”
“Whoa,” Spraggue said. “I was just thinking out loud. Remind me not to do that in front of a cop.”
“Sorry.”
“Has anyone gone through the files Pete would have had access to when he was working with the firemen?”
“Somebody will.”
“What about his apartment? Who looked through that?”
“Menlo.”
“Then you might say it hasn’t been touched.”
“If you plan on going in there, you’re going to have to talk to the sister.”
“Then the seal is off the door?”
“Did I say that?” Hurley said. “I must be getting careless in my old age.”
TWENTY-ONE
He did try to phone Sharon Collatos, made three futile attempts: one as soon as his alarm chirped at 9 A.M.; one after he’d showered, shaved, and dressed; one while boiling water dripped through the filter paper into the coffee pot. He dialed information and checked the number. It was correct.
Before leaving the house, he placed his set of picklocks in the pocket of his windbreaker.
Pete Collatos lived near the Boston-Brookline border, in a section of the city associated with college kids, not cops. He’d probably chosen the narrow five-story brick building for its proximity to B.U. coeds. Cops he got to see every day.
Stepping down off the Green Line train at the St. Mary’s Street stop, Spraggue had a vision of Collatos out to fascinate the sociology majors with his tales of gritty street life. Ah, Pete would have been an object of interest in these self-aggrandizing eighties. Not like the sixties, when a cop on a college campus couldn’t get laid.
On Buswell Street, students tossed a yellow Frisbee down the center of the narrow road. Abandon all cars, ye who enter here. Punk rock blared from a fourth floor window. The Frisbee fell at his feet and he flung it back, feeling old.
Pete had thrown a party to celebrate his first and only promotion as a cop. Spraggue remembered the night, the crowd of boisterous strangers crammed into a fifth floor walk-up. He still had the address scrawled across a page in his black Harvard Coop book for the academic year ’79–’80.
The building had a security system, but the tenants didn’t abide by it. Spraggue pressed the button for apartment 2A. No one home. Same at 3A. 4B buzzed him in without bothering to use the voice-over speaker. He waited a minute in the hallway to see if 4B appeared, readied his apology: Excuse me, meant to push 4A. 4B didn’t seem to care who he’d let in; a Jehovah’s witness, an insurance salesman, or the Boston Strangler would just have to trudge on up the four flights and introduce himself.
The lock on Collatos’ door was child’s play. He could have left his picklocks at home and used a credit card. The light in the hallway was so dim that his fingers found the scratches on the lock before he saw them. Had Collatos been a burglary target? Or had the cops made a mess of a simple B&E? Surely Menlo would have roused the superintendent to let them into Pete’s locked apartment.
At the long ago party, the essential bareness of the place had been camouflaged by the crowd. Sunlight, flooding through curtainless squares of window, was less merciful. It picked out the worn places on the drab rug, washed the color out of the faded print sofa.
Spraggue closed the door and leaned against it. Floors and ceilings in these older buildings were generally soundproof; walls notoriously thin. He slipped off his shoes to ensure quiet movement, smoothed thin plastic gloves over his hands.
He walked the periphery of the apartment: five stingy rooms. One living room, tiny kitchen attached by an arching doorway. A narrow hallway opened off another living room wall, leading to one adequate bedroom, one study that barely had room for a desk, and a bathroom big enough to turn around in.
He began with the living room, feeling under the cushions of the sprung couch. He found a dime, two pennies, stale popcorn. He leafed through every dusty book on a board-and-brick bookcase, adventure yarns, police procedurals, “How to Pass the Boston Police Sergeant’s Exam.” Collatos had dog-eared the corners of paperbacks, used respectful bookmarks for hardbacks. Spraggue didn’t think that insight would get him anywhere.
The police had already searched. Cushions on two mismatched chairs were askew. The top drawer of a desk against the far wall hung open. Muddy footprints crisscrossed the yellowed kitchen linoleum.
He learned that Collatos ate Rice Krispies for breakfast, probably with half-and-half; no milk in the refrigerator. Of course, some cop could have spilled it down the drain, his nose offended by the odor. But the same cop would have tossed the reeking cream. He shut the refrigerator. Just a half-empty carton of chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer. Ice cubes.
He tried not to think while his fingers automatically probed the pockets of the coats hanging in the front closet. He recited his lines from the evening’s show—Caucasian Chalk Circle, he was almost sure. Still, the task depressed the hell out of him. Why did he have to know that Pete kept a forlorn pile of single socks at the back of an otherwise empty drawer, that he should have done his laundry more often? Why should he discover that Pete never resoled his shoes, or threw them out? That he owned no pajamas? Two sets of sheets. That he drank Rolling Rock beer and left the cans in the corners of the living room, especially next to the armchair that faced the black-and-white TV.
In the bottom corner of the lower left-hand drawer of the bureau in the bedroom, he found a cache of sorts: condoms, body oils. Why not in the bathroom? Had Pete not wanted the occasional stay-the-night ladyfriend to open the medicine chest and find him so prepared?
The creak of floorboards in the small study off the hallway startled him. Old buildings had noises of their own. He shrugged and continued stripping Pete’s bed. Didn’t anybody hide things under mattresses anymore?
The sharp thud from the study was no creaky floorboard. Spraggue froze, dropped the pillow back on the bed. He picked up a cracked glass ashtray, hefted it for throwing weight. The outraged ghost of Pete Collatos wouldn’t make so much noise.
He tiptoed to the door of the study. Empty.
There was a closet next to an old-fashioned rocking chair. The chair teetered slowly, back and forth. A rickety aluminum table sat next to the chair. It held an ashtray, a box of tissues, a Rolling Rock can and the telephone. The receiver dangled the floor.
“Come on out,” Spraggue said.
Silence.
“Come on.”
“Get away,” the woman’s voice said weakly. “Get away. I have a gun in here. I mean it. I’ll shoot.”
“Sure you do,” Spraggue said, recognizing the voice. “A howitzer or an M-16?”
He yanked open the closet door. Sharon Collatos would have fallen to the ground if he hadn’t caught her. He dropped the ashtray and it shattered on the floor.
TWENTY-TWO
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
She huddled on the faded couch, smoothing a black skirt that might have been the same one she’d worn to the funeral. She stared down at her hands to make sure they’d stopped shaking, steeled her voice and whispered, “I have every right to be here.” Her voice cracked when she tried to make it louder. “What are you doing here?”
“What you asked me to do. At the funeral.”
“I’m s
orry about that. I was … I had no business … Pete’s death isn’t your responsibility.”
“Is it yours?”
Black eyeliner had run down her cheeks in inky stripes. She put her hands to her eyes and smudged them into gray circles, puffy with lack of sleep. Her right stocking had a run up the side. Her wrinkled gray sweater … Hadn’t she worn that under her black suit jacket at the funeral?
“Have you been here since Pete’s funeral?” Hadn’t the woman any friends, any family, one good neighbor?
“I guess … I don’t know …”
“Christ! That was Sunday. This is Wednesday. Where did you sleep? The bed wasn’t touched. Have you eaten since Sunday?”
No answer, just that blank paralyzed stare. When she’d fallen out of the closet, mouth open in a soundless scream, her face had registered terror. He thought he’d seen recognition, even relief when he’d cradled her shaken body, half lifted, half dragged her into the living room. Now, nothing.
“Come on.” He walked her into the kitchen, sat her down on a plastic-covered dinette chair. He started to open the refrigerator, remembered the contents and stopped. He filled the kettle with water. Blue flame sputtered into a ring on the stove’s front burner. There had been soup cans in the wooden cupboard over the stove. He rejected Campbell’s Clam Chowder: no milk. Cream of Mushroom might be tolerable with water.
“Don’t bother.” she said weakly.
Pete kept booze in a cabinet under the laminated blue countertop. Spraggue tilted a dollop of vermouth into the soup. Sherry would have been better. Pete didn’t have any coffee, but there were tea bags stuffed into a tin canister.
Sharon Collatos used her left hand to prop up her forehead. With her right hand, she traced circles on the tabletop. Dark, tangled hair fell forward and hid her face. She didn’t look up when he put a spoon down next to her. He poured bubbling soup into a chipped bowl.
“Eat it,” he said.
“When I heard the door open, I hid. I thought you were Pete’s killer. I hoped you were just a thief.”
“A soup thief. I leave the cans. Eat.” He busied himself with teabags, didn’t turn back to her until he heard the clink of silverware on crockery.